


Velocity

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Immobility, M/M, Wealth, drugged food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:57:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21700393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: “We are going for dinner,” Simon informs him. “I arranged it with Peter. Or, I should say, I won a bet, which was bound to happen eventually, but I’m rather glad it was when his stake was something I actually wanted.”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Simon Fairchild
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59
Collections: Consent Issues Exchange 2019





	Velocity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nan/gifts).



It doesn’t even surprise Martin anymore. He’d thought, once, that the Magnus Institute would be a little bit unusual, as a workplace. That he’d be shelving books full of scrawled arcane Latin, have odd colleagues, that sort of thing. But he’d assumed they’d stop at quirks. Little strangenesses, maybe not the normal kind, but still something he’d be able to cope with.

Then the books had killed people, and his colleagues’ names had become ones that stick in his throat and _hurt_. After that, after too many nights sleeping with a fire extinguisher, after quietly accepting that there’s not really anything that any amount of locks can do, after months of a loneliness monster appearing to him out of thin air whenever the mood strikes, the only really startling part of noticing a presence at his desk is that it isn’t Peter’s.

He looks up, expecting it to be, but the space where his head should have been is empty – Martin’s eyes cant down, and down, until they find Simon Fairchild. He takes up almost no space, and yet the sense of him in Martin’s mind pushes at the edges of the room, until he’s not sure how he could ever have believed there was anyone else there.

“Got you working late, has he?” he asks, the instant that Martin’s eyes meet his, with a bright and frivolous smile.

“There’s work to be done,” Martin says, shortly, and looks pointedly back down at his keyboard. Doesn’t start to type at it, too wary to not hear the click of a tape recorder or a movement from Simon, but he hopes it sends the signal. The Institute’s emails still need answering, for all that it feels like nothing – he and the Archives staff are working in the shadow of monsters, so a dispute amongst the research staff that, as far as he can tell, traces back to a stapler that had actually been stolen by Tim over a year ago, seems carefully designed to glaze his eyes over – and it’s far better that he deals with them than Peter.

“Not anymore,” Simon declares. Martin can still hear that damned grin in his voice, but there’s nothing else, no implication of an approach. For all that that means anything – he’s not Prentiss, he doesn’t need contact. “I believe you’re finished for the night.”

“No,” Martin retorts, letting his eyes skip to the unreads, half a mind on calculating how long he could make them last, if Simon decides he’s in the mood to wait. “I really don’t think I am.”

“He didn’t tell you?” Simon leans into the periphery of Martin’s vision, glancing over his shoulder towards the door – he visibly dismisses it, in favour of shifting a little closer over a walking stick that Martin expects he has solely for the purpose of having something he can loom over. “I suppose that’s not unlike him.”

“Tell me _what_?” Martin shoots a direct glance at him, but he can’t read anything from Simon’s face except what he supposes is his usual expression, a wave-crash away from breaking out into glee. Could mean anything. Nothing to indicate that Peter might have found out he has no intention of going along with whatever the plan is, no sign that he’s about to get whatever passes for a P45 for the Archives, delivered by proxy or pipe.

“We are going for dinner,” Simon informs him. “I arranged it with Peter. Or, I should say, I won a bet, which was bound to happen eventually, but I’m rather glad it was when his stake was something I actually wanted.”

“My time isn’t his to bet with,” Martin points out, and risks a couple of keystrokes. It feels less likely that he’s going to be killed on a whim, but they’re still hushed, unproductive.

“That’s an odd way of looking at it.” The cadence of Simon’s voice is starting to push over into amused now, and Martin struggles to keep his jaw loose. “He _is_ the one paying you, isn’t he? So, demonstrably, that’s not the case. Tonight, he’s paying you to come out for a meal with an old man.”

Martin pushes his chair back slightly, letting the grate of the legs against the floorboards shudder into the air, and leans more heavily on his desk. It’s a largely pointless movement, but it’s something to do that isn’t snapping out that Peter’s not his _madam_.

“Unless he’s planning to work some overtime into the budget,” Martin says. “Then no.” Peter wouldn’t know how to do that even if he wanted to – he wouldn’t be able to find a spreadsheet if the desktop background was made entirely of arrows pointing to the shortcut. “He’s not actually paying me to be anywhere right now.”

“And this is what you choose to do with your free time?” Simon’s nose wrinkles, ever so slightly. “You are no fun at _all_. Has–”

“Well.” Martin gives a half-shrug, gestures across the room. “You know where the door is. Sorry to have wasted your time.”

“Has Peter taught you nothing?” Simon goes on, as though he’d never been interrupted, still in that steady, even tone. “He’s never been the easiest person to get along with, but if you can work out what he likes… Oh, the stories I could tell you.”

Martin blinks. He can see that baited hook as clearly as if it was in the scale that Simon usually deals in. A show of information, Simon flashing his knowledge like a wad of cash. More information on Peter, even if he has no more reason to trust Simon than he does Elias or Peter himself, isn’t a prospect that he can give up on, not if he might learn something he could use against him.

“And where were you thinking of going?” he asks, each sound of it sticking, still half-reluctant.

Simon’s grin reaches his eyes, the skin around them crinkling into well-worn crow’s feet, and it’s somehow worse than if they’d stayed as dead and shark-like as Martin would have imagined.

“It’s a surprise,” he says. “Consider it a lesson in… enjoyment. Shall we?”

Martin’s answering smile might as well have been painted on.

* * *

Martin knows, sort of, that Simon Fairchild has a lot of money. Just like he knows that Peter has a lot of money, or that royalty does. He’s read about their families funding space exploration, has seen their names in the Institute’s financial documents. He understands the theory of it, in so far as he ever could.

It’s still difficult not to be taken aback when he’s escorted into the restaurant of a Mayfair hotel and finds it completely empty. His first instinct is that Peter had had a hand in it, but when he glances around for him or his absence, Simon sees him looking, and gives another wide smile.

“I was given to understand that you had rather taken to the quiet lately,” he says. “So I made sure we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

Martin chews at the inside of his cheek, and says nothing, for all that he’d like to claim he’s not going to be won over by expensive gifts, or stir himself to moral outrage at the sheer amount of wealth on display. He just lets himself be led to a table by an unobtrusive waiter, though he pulls out his own chair.

“I took the liberty of ordering for us already,” Simon tells him, once they’re both sitting. All of his attention is fixed on Martin, intense enough that it raises the hairs on the back of his neck, makes it difficult to focus on what he’s actually saying, voice starting to slide into Martin’s subconscious like that of an accepted radio host. “Forgive my making assumptions, but you seemed to indicate that you find your time rather valuable.”

The tone makes it feel like a dig, and Martin’s too busy trying to work out if he’s supposed to be holding Simon’s gaze or not to rise to it. He thinks maybe he’s meant to argue about it, like he had before, push the idea that his lifespan, anyone’s lifespan, for all that it might be insignificant to Simon, still has meaning.

“Fine,” Martin says, treats the word like a roadblock. Simon wants to be entertained, he guesses, and he already knows why Martin’s there.

The conversation lapses into silence, and Martin watches as Simon Fairchild watches him. From time to time, his eyes crinkle as though he’s in on some private joke that Martin doesn’t understand, but otherwise it’s just more of that hovering right on the edge of laughter. It sets Martin’s teeth on edge.

The waiter comes back, eventually, holding two glasses and a bottle of wine that’s clearly too old for Martin to even bother making a guess at how much it must have cost. He has no idea if Simon’s trying to impress or intimidate or if the money is supposed to be just another manifestation of his power, awesome and overwhelming.

The cork is removed, and the wine poured without even the hint of a clink of glasses, though Martin’s sure he can feel the edge of one, reverberating at the edges of his thoughts, a static he can’t quite attach to anything. Simon takes his, as the waiter slips away again, and swirls it briefly, though it seems more like a performance than anything else – his gaze flits over to Martin more than once, like he’s checking he’s paying attention, and then he drinks.

Martin takes a sip, once he’s seen Simon’s throat bob with swallowing, and tries not to grimace. It’s unpleasant, to a tongue used to oversugared tea, and he’d never really been into expensive wine at the best of times. Simon looks like he’s waiting for Martin to comment, the slightest lift of an eyebrow that might be expectant.

“So, how long have you known Peter?” Martin asks, unwilling to give him the satisfaction – he’d agreed to come out, after all. It feels like he’s due something in return. He wishes for a moment that he could do what Jon does, that he could just cut straight through to what he wants to know and be sure that the answer will be a solid, dependable truth. None of this would have been necessary, then, or if Jon had just never been gone in the first place.

Simon Fairchild sighs.

“That is not the way to make a gentleman feel wanted, Martin,” he says, the reprimand slow and even. “Is that really the only reason you agreed to come?”

“You know it was,” Martin points out. “I try not to make a habit of eating out with monsters.”

“No?” Simon leans forward slightly, like they’re having the interesting conversation he probably wanted anyway. “Do you not think so? Do you consider what you do more eating in?”

Martin thinks about standing again, thanking Simon for the wine, and walking out. Having a moment of refusal, like Tim had, snarling at Elias and the Circus and anything else that had come too close. He’s not sure it had ever made him feel good, but there had been something in all that scathing rage that did a fair impression of savage joy. Maybe Martin would like it, after spending so long trying to fit through Peter’s plans like water. But the impulse is abruptly too heavy for his head, and he settles for glowering.

“We’ll have to see if I can change your mind,” Simon muses, with a brief glance back into his glass.

Martin opens his mouth to say something, but his tongue is far too thick. He rolls it around between his teeth for a second, trying to get it to remember itself, but it doesn’t. Simon’s expression starts to shift, preparing an almost-pleasant smile. Waiting, Martin thinks.

“What did you do?” he manages to force out, garbled and difficult, and his mind spins with the effort, thoughts plunging off the edges of the syllables.

“I think that’s rather clear.” Simon swirls at the wine again, then sets it back down. “You’re probably wondering more how I did it – you saw the bottle opened, I didn’t go near it, that sort of thing. And this is the problem with so many of you, something which I would like to be able to fix in your case. You see the scale of what I am, but you don’t quite comprehend it, so you stop trying. You know that I’m rich enough to send a man to space, you know I can buy out this entire building – I’m not sure what makes you think that I couldn’t pay someone just a little bit more to put something in your glass.”

Martin looks up at him, eye rolling, from where his cheek now seems to be resting against the table. It’s an awkward angle, and his neck aches with it, but he can’t correct it. Distantly, Simon stands, and his figure distorts in Martin’s perception, too many layers of him and none of them the right size, until he’s all Martin can see.

“Take him upstairs, if you’d be so kind,” Simon tells someone Martin can’t perceive, and the sound of it cracks against his head so hard that he looses all noise, and with it, everything else.

* * *

Martin comes to lying on a bed, and that in itself is enough to trigger a beat of wild panic in his throat. He’s not been sleeping at home enough for anything like that to feel normal, and even if he had, the sheet smells freshly-laundered, without even a hint of anything musty, a world away from his own duvet, that he can still catch hints of Prentiss’ visit on, though he’d had it all professionally cleaned as much as he could afford. It’s an elsewhere, and when he grabs for his last few memories, there’s nothing in them to reassure him.

He takes a moment to control his breathing, and listens – it’s quiet, though he can make out the occasional faint rustle of what he thinks might be paper from somewhere behind him. Nothing else, so he risks opening his eyes, trying to keep as still as possible – it’s a hotel room, sleek and minimalist and almost certainly expensive enough to make a company director weep. He can just about see the door, wood-panelled and polished. Not far.

Maybe, he thinks, he could make it out. Simon isn’t Elias – he wouldn’t just be able to see where Martin was and root him out, so as long as he could get out of the room, he might be able to hide, make it back to the Institute and what safety he can find there. All he has to do is reach the door.

Another pass of his eyes across the limited sweep of wall finds him the faintest of reflections in the housing of a light switch – there’s a shape on the bed behind him, mostly obscured by a broad shape that Martin guesses might be a newspaper. As he watches, one of the pages is turned, and he hears the click of a pen.

He isn’t paying attention, Martin concludes, and bolts – tries to. There’s a short, sharp need for motion that should have done something, feels like it does, but his limbs don’t even twitch. It’s utterly impossible, as there’s abruptly a weight on him, pressing down to hard that he can hardly breathe. A rough gasp drags itself from his throat, and his mind flashes with a brief memory of Jon, a voice from an older time when Tim had still been there, and, for all Martin had known, so had Sasha. Crushed cases in a jeweller’s shop, a con artist with too many names, and he wonders if his bones will crack like that glass.

“I’d rather if you just wait there until I’m ready for you,” Simon announces, and there’s no show of effort in it. “Actually, maybe you could help me with this one – what’s the capital city of Switzerland? I used to be so good at these, but I’ve found myself no longer considering the distinctions between all the larger cities quite so relevant as I used to.”

Martin tries to move again – just to crook a finger this time, to believe it’s possible. He can’t, though his forearm aches with the effort.

“Impatient, are we?” Simon asks, and the paper rustles again – Martin can see the shape of it shrinking in the reflection, hears the click of the pen again. “I didn’t think you’d be so eager.” There’s more movement in the light switch, and then it’s gone, and the next Martin knows of where Simon is is the puff of his breath again the back of his neck. “I suppose I can change my priorities around a little, after all, you have given up a long night of emailing to be here with me.”

Martin struggles to open his mouth – he wants to protest, he thinks, to say something, anything, to prove he doesn’t want this, but he can barely seem to part his lips before it’s too much, too heavy. In contrast, the cold touch that brushes against the nape of his neck is so light that he wouldn’t have felt it if not for the chill. It starts to trail down, wandering between his vertebrae, and he can’t even shiver in response, though he can feel his body making the attempt, the idea of the shudder stark in every synapse that has no way of acting on it.

“I’m not _really_ surprised that Peter didn’t tell you,” Simon muses, low and clearly audible even past the beat of Martin’s heart. His lips press against Martin’s thrumming pulse, just as his other hand brushes up under his shirt, tracing over his stomach. Even if he could have shrunk away, there would have been no direction for the flinch. “He wasn’t pleased to lose the bet, though.” His words are muffled against Martin’s crawling skin, but he can’t find his way to a place where he doesn’t understand them. “Has he been after this himself? It can be difficult to tell sometimes.”

Martin can’t answer, and Simon’s fingers push past the waistband of his trousers, slide against his cock. He wants to snarl, cringe away, settle into the haze of panic that keeps his arms and legs trying to jerk into action, his blood burning underneath everywhere Simon touches, but he’s pinned in place like a butterfly.

There’s a soft, pleased sigh against his neck, and a part of him, one that could have been there all along or something the Eye moulded, reminds him that Simon wants his fear, more than anything. That that’s what they all want, and that he’s always given it up too easily.

He struggles to swallow, and tries not to feel it. As bargaining chips go, it’s not an easy one to take hold of, but he doesn’t have anything else – it would have been nice to think that Peter’s influence would protect him from Simon’s whims, but if Peter’s willing to sell him out like this for an evening and risk losing whatever trust he thinks they have, maybe Martin’s not as important to him as he thought, or maybe a Martin traumatised by something like this is just something he thinks he can take advantage of.

 _It’s just sex_ , he tells himself, as Simon starts to pull down his trousers. Not worms or corridors or Elias dragging things into his head that have no right to be there. He’s done sex before. Not like this, but he doubts it’s going to be that much different.

“Of course,” Simon goes on, as his fingers start to probe into Martin, slick and not as violently as Martin would have expected. “It would be a little more fun if you had been a little less resistant, but I hope there’ll be time for that later. It’s not as if you gave me many other choices.”

 _You could have left me alone_ , Martin thinks, anger flushing bright through his skull – he grabs at it, tries to hold onto it, burn the fear out of his system with it, but Simon just makes a soft, chiding noise with his tongue that almost sweeps it away completely. He licks at the back of Martin’s neck, moves closer, the mattress barely even dipping at his almost non-existent weight, until Martin can feel the shape of his erection, pressing at his lower back.

Martin closes his eyes again, and tries to count, though one of Simon’s hands is still working idly at his cock, and he can feel himself starting to harden in response. _Just sex_ , he reminds himself, and tries to distance himself from the drowning pit in his mind that needs so desperately to get _away_ that it sweeps everything else aside.

“I do see why he likes you so much.” Peter’s still talking, though it’s almost far away now. His fingers slide out of Martin, and start to run careless patterns across his hip. “But I _was_ due a win, and after everything I’ve lost to him over the years, I hardly feel it’s unfair. I do quite enjoy you, and I’m interested to see how well you cope at my… velocity.”

There’s another of those sighs. Martin feels something _crunch_ inside his head – when he looks again, the hotel sheets are gone. The hotel is gone, the restaurant blow – there’s nothing but a great blue emptiness, and he’s no longer pressed into a bed, but falling. It’s impossible, he tries to think, but that word hasn’t been real in far too long, and he can’t force his flaring mind to believe in it now.

He shouts without a realisation that he can now, but the sound is lost in the whistling of the wind past his face, and he’s sure no one hears it. If he’s still in the hotel, he expects that Simon bought out the rooms, too, and if he isn’t, then there is no one else in that expanse, except for Simon, and the abrupt thrust of his cock into Martin. He fucks him hard and fast, and he’s far bigger than Martin would have expected – somewhere far-off and half-hysterical, he wants to snigger about that, but the impulse in his head is drowned out by the pain and heat spiralling under his skin, the only thing that he can feel aside from the thunder of his own terror and exhilaration.

It’s not something he would have expected. He’d never been one for rollercoasters – hadn’t hated them, but hadn’t seen the point in taking the time out of his life, either. Plane trips had been a chore but no great source of horror. He’d stood in glass lifts and been most annoyed by the monotonous jingle of the elevator music.

This is nothing like that. There are no barriers, no concept of a framework or a cart or a bored-looking attendant checking him against the _you must be this high to ride_ sign. The tearing of the wind pulls the air out of his lungs, drags it past his face, and his head spirals at the idea of how fast he must be falling, the distance he must past in an instant.

Any hope of keeping hold of anything approaching thought, he thinks he must have lost hundreds of miles up. Simon stretches him, pushes into him and fills him with a vigour that Martin wouldn’t have expected, silent now as the fall says everything that he’d need to. Martin comes, manages to drag in enough breath to cry out again, and Simon carries on and on.

By the time that he orgasms, Martin has lost track of time and space and his own body, and he hardly notices when he’s back in the hotel sheets, sticky with his own semen and with Simon’s cock softening inside him. The material feels raw against his air-scoured skin, the tepid room temperature not cold enough.

“There.” Simon pulls out of him, and Martin is vaguely aware of him shuffling away, doesn’t raise his head. He thinks he could, now. Knows he could, that he could move as much as he likes. He just lies there, stays where he’s been put. “Wasn’t that better?”

 _Yes,_ answers the part of Martin’s head that he doesn’t want to listen to. It had been better. Better than what, he’s not sure, but he’d felt more than he has in months in Peter’s haze, and even before that, there’s nothing in his life that he could compare to it, nothing he’s seen or dreamt that he could put in place of an endless empty sky and hope for it to hold a candle to it.

“If you want to get back to your emails,” Simon tells him. “You can go now.”

Martin isn’t sure if it’s a dismissal, if he’s supposed to stumble to his feet, tidy his clothes, leave humiliated. He doesn’t think he can. Has no idea if he’s meant to – he doesn’t think there was anything in Simon’s voice that meant he thought there was even a sliver of a possibility of Martin going anywhere that evening. Part of him supposes that maybe he can use this – Peter’s building towards something, and once it becomes clear that Martin’s not going to be a part of it in the way he wants, he’ll need allies of his own, and perhaps Simon Fairchild wouldn’t be the worst place to start. It’s also not horrible to be on the inside of a joke at Peter’s expense. And it’s probably best not to offend Simon too much now he’s had what he wanted, keep himself alive so he can take care of the others. There are a lot of reasons, he decides, why he stays.

If Jon had asked him, though, sharp-eyed and sharper-voiced, he'd have had no choice but to say that he just wants to fall again.


End file.
